How to Draw a Manga Boy

Learn how to draw a manga boy from art instructor Chris Hart in this Howcast video.

Transcript

Here are some hints on how to draw a manga boy. Now, there are several different types. The most popular are the teen idol, the sort of like 19-year-old boy. And the other type is a younger boy, like 14. He's kind of loyal and brave and that kind of stuff. This one is the older type. He's got sleek features and almond-shaped eyes. The other type is a shojo type, which is a certain genre of manga. And as you can see, he's got a wider face, larger eyes. He's kind of cute and young-looking.

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So we're going to learn how to draw this guy. And what we're going to do is to draw him is we're going to start on a construction. Now this is sort of like a grid on how we draw a character. I'm going to start by explaining the center line and the eye line. In order to keep everything in perspective, we draw a center line that goes right down the middle of the face, intersects with the bridge of the nose, and right through the mouth to the chin.

The eye line is very important so both eyes are even. You don't want one higher than the other. Here's a challenging part for drawing three-quarter views for beginners. It's the edge of the face. So to make that nice and appealing, what we do is we draw a concave line here at the forehead. Bring it down, like so. And we have to now leave a little bump for the cheek right out here. See how that bumps out a little bit right here?

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Then we bring it back in, and you make another concave line like so, and attach that to the jaw like this. Now we have to think about shadows. Light generally comes from above, either from a ceiling light or from the sun. It comes down, but it's blocked from the neck by the chin. So there's a shadow that appears here. We're going to draw that shadow right in here. Now, he's a very full-faced guy. Another alternative is to bring the chin in at an even more severe angle like this, to make a different look for the character. You can adjust these to suit yourself.

And now at this point we add a little shading right here across the bridge of the nose and fill in the ear. The ear gives people trouble, but you simplify it basically. It's like this. The edge, the rim right here, and show an ear flap, and then one interior articulation. And that's all you really need. So let's take a look. There is our manga boy.